We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Asha Dahya a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Asha , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

There are three projects I recently worked on and am currently working on that are meaningful for different reasons.

The first is a short documentary I produced titled ‘MY NAME IS SIRI’, profiling the story of the Chettipally family from the Bay Area in California. Their eldest daughter Siri, 31, has severe non-verbal autism. The film follows Siri as she embarks on a journey to independence – enrolling in college and moving out of home. Along the way we learn about the struggles they faced as an immigrant family looking for resources in the early 1990’s, and how Siri’s journey is now inspiring the autism community and other families around her. The film premiered on PBS May 1st, 2023. This project was meaningful to me as I am also from an Indian immigrant family and I have family members with autism. I was able to go to a premiere screening with the director, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Sarah Moshman, and witness the first-hand impact of the Chettipally family and how their story is empowering other parents of kids with Autism in the Bay Area know that support exists, and that they are not alone. This whole filming and screening experience made me realize how important documentary filmmaking is, and how sharing our stories have the power to change lives.
The second recent project was a series of short PSA videos I produced for the ACLU’s ‘RIGHT TO LEARN’ campaign. In the midst of a terrifying wave of books being banned across schools in the United States, this campaign was incredibly important to me as a mom of two school-aged kids, in whom I am trying to instill values about diversity, inclusion and kindness. I had the opportunity to film with celebrities such as Pamela Adlon, Jessica Williams, Logan Browning, Randall Park, Tom Morello, Melissa Fumero and Rachel Bloom, who read excerpts from banned books on camera, sharing their own perspective on why allowing children the freedom to learn about life, the world and families from a variety of perspectives is so vital for their development.
The third project I am currently in post-production on is my own short documentary titled ‘Someone You Know’. It profiles 3 women who are sharing their stories of trying to access abortion later in their pregnancies, and the numerous barriers they faced along the way. This 20 min doc will combine animation as a key storytelling tool, and it is designed to empower abortion storytellers to know that their voices matter, today more than ever. This film began in 2020 and was initially designed to be a conversation resource in the lead up to the 2020 Presidential election. The Pandemic and budget restrictions unfortunately put it on hold, but I persisted over the following years by applying for small grants and self-funding wherever I could. Now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v Wade, and we are experiencing some major changes to reproductive healthcare across America, this short film is even more important and timely than ever, and I cannot wait to share it with the world later in 2023.

Asha , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a producer, TEDx Speaker and writer, with 20 years of experience in broadcast and digital media, in Australia as well as the United States. I have worked for networks, platforms and brands such as MTV, Disney, Nickelodeon, Fox, ABC, MSNBC, Snapchat, ACLU, Supermajority, Bitesize TV and more. I am the founder of a daily blogsite called GirlTalkHQ.com, where I publish interviews with badass everyday women, profiles on interesting people creating change in a variety of industries, and guest posts from womxn, girls and femmes from around the world who want a platform to share their stories and lived experiences.
In 2020, I released a book titled ‘Today’s Wonder Women: Everyday Superheroes Who Are Changing The World’. This opportunity was a book deal that came about after a literary agent found my blog and my work. The book features 50 everyday womxn and girls from around the world who are inspiring change through a number of industries.
I currently host a podcast series for Reprofilm.org, interviewing filmmakers, activists and repro health experts, with episodes released each month. I am also the board chair of a national non-profit called Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC.org).
I am also in post-production on a short documentary about later abortion titled ‘Someone You Know’, and in development on an audio documentary series about the Green Wave feminist movement in Latin America titled ‘Green Tide Rising’.
As you can see through all my work, I am passionate about gender equality, social justice and reproductive freedom.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In 2019 I was over the moon to learn I had landed a book deal with Dover publications, to publish my book ‘Today’s Wonder Women’, which was inspired by an interview series I started on my daily blogsite GirlTalkHQ.com. It felt serendipitous as I also just found out I was expecting a baby girl! Throughout my second pregnancy I was able to work on the book with the goal of releasing it during Women’s History Month in 2020. So I gave birth in October 2019 to my daughter Zoie, and in early 2020 began prepping my book launch and promo tour. I hired a publicist for a few months (which, as anyone who has done this knows is VERY expensive!) and got as far as San Diego and Las Vegas in early March, before the global pandemic shut down the entire world. ‘Today’s Wonder Women’ was released on March 18, 2020, but it was a confusing time for me. I was still breastfeeding, I didn’t know how to fully process what was happening with COVID just yet, and I had to cancel my trips to New York, Chicago and Arizona, which included a potential appearance on the ‘Today’ show my publicist and I were working on. Needless to say, I was devastated for my “third baby”, my book. It was extremely hard to pivot and try to utilize social media instead – having 2 babies under 2 at that point was all-consuming and exhausting. I felt like a failure, and in some ways still do. But I also understand how so much of that was out of my control. I believed everything would fall into place perfectly, just the way the book deal did. Unfortunately, life is not always perfect, and neither are our career or business paths. I’ve learned a lot about myself over the past few years, and that has been my biggest takeaway – when so much is out of control around us, how do we turn inward and work to better ourselves? Whether this story is helpful or not, my hope is that it will remind whoever is reading this that you are not alone, failure is not the end of the road, and sometimes the way forward ends up looking completely different to what we may imagine.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My goal through all aspects of my work is to elevate the voices and stories of marginalized folks, especially women and girls of color. I aim to be inclusive of all genders, and showcase what a better world can look like through personal storytelling. My focus on reproductive freedom and gender equality was borne out of a tumultuous time in my life. I was raised conservative Evangelical, and moving to the US from Australia in 2009 I had no idea how political the landscape really was until I was involved in it (the year Barack Obama became the first Black president in US history, no less!). The following year I also got married (for the first time) to a guy from my church, after a very quick engagement – a common occurrence among Evangelical Youth.
One of the issues I soon learned was a “prerequisite” for being conservative Evangelical, was taking a stance on abortion. Specifically, identifying with the “pro life” label. Previous to 2009, I had no opinion on politics in general, and certainly not on abortion, but I believed in birth control as well as the “morning after pill”, and had used both.
After blindly following the “pro life” label for a few years without doing any research of my own, I learned that one of the most prominent youth leaders in my church, who was very openly “pro life”, got pregnant and decided to have an abortion. I was shocked! At the same time, my marriage was not going well. It became abusive and toxic in a number of ways and I knew I had to leave. Despite pressure from church leaders to stay in an abusive marriage, and one close girlfriend even telling me I should choose to “do the right thing” and stay with him, even if he doesn’t treat me right, I knew in my gut that leaving was the only way forward for me.
Throughout the time I was going through a divorce, I felt alone and afraid. I received threats, and constant messages from men in my former church I didn’t even know that well that I was disappointing God by choosing to get a divorce. Although I was an integral part of many programs at that church for 5 years – worship team, bible study leader, women’s ministry, youth camps – not one person reached out to see where I was or ask how I was doing after I left suddenly. It made me angry, sad and incredibly hurt to think that a community I invested so much of my time, energy and heart into, abandoned me because I was not conforming to their strict gender roles.
At the same time, leaving that church inspired me to think wider about not just gender, but topics like abortion and birth control. It made me dive into research, read personal stories, and learn that 60% of people who get abortions are mothers, a majority of women who get abortions are religious, and 95% of abortion patients do not regret their choice. Recalling the story of the youth leader who got pregnant and secretly tried to have an abortion (she has since shared her story publicly on a number of platforms) enabled me to learn that having s*x outside of marriage and making your own choices about sexuality was a far bigger shame than abortion. It was also in discovering the Reproductive Justice movement, founded by a coalition o Black Women leaders in the early 1990’s, that enabled me to think deeper about what it means to have autonomy over every aspect of your body and life, with the freedom, justice and access to do so.
Today, I believe in storytelling that dismantles shame. I realize how many people are in the same situation as I previously was, and are perhaps looking for dialog or stories that will enable them to know they are not alone, and that there is more to the issue of reproductive rights that what is often taught from a church pulpit. And now that Roe v Wade has been overturned (a goal many people in my former church were openly working toward but are no doubt privately worried about given the number of conservative church women who secretly access abortions), I see the first hand impact of abortion storytelling through film, media and entertainment.
So I feel it is a privilege and a responsibility for me to draw from my background and use that experience as fuel to create space for dialog that centers the voices of abortion storytellers, and amplifies the importance of reproductive freedom in all forms.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ashadahya.com
• Instagram: @ashadahya
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashadahya/
• Twitter: @ashadahya
• Other: www.girltalkhq.com www.todayswonderwomenbook.com

Image Credits
Image courtesy of Angelo Sgambati Image courtesy of Sarah Moshman Image courtesy of Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles Image courtesy of March for Moms, Los Angeles Image courtesy of TEDx Normal